WALT WHITMAN and BILL DUCKETT:
MAN/BOY LOVERS

by Charley Shively

Bill Duckett's relationship to Walt Whitman can be glimpsed
in the
photograph of the two taken together around 1886. Whitman liked to sit
for photographs, but in almost all of his poses he is on stage alone.
(Another
exceptional photograph shows him in 1865 perched on a love seat with
Peter
Doyle, whose hand touches the poet's thigh.) The sexual aura of the
Whitman-Duckett
photograph comes through despite the studio trappings of fake shore,
flowers,
and balcony. His elbow wavering near the crouch, Whitman leans one arm
against Bill's thigh. Duckett, mean-time, has his arm somewhat
self-consciously
around the older man's neck. Duckett's crotch comes through in the
photograph,
and, despite scratches, there's just a distinct hint of cock under the
formal pin stripes.

Bill Duckett looks awkward and ill at ease in the photograph.
His
short coat sleeves suggest he was still growing. In the nineteenth
century,
young men began wearing suit, tie, and hat at a very early age in order
to bring themselves more rapidly and directly into the world of
adulthood.
The age of sexual consent was 10 in many states, and there were few
child
labor or compulsory school attendance laws. All accounts agree that
Bill
was young. In a letter of reference that Whitman wrote trying to get
Bill
employment, the poet vouched: "He is used to the city, & to life
&
people ~ is in his 18th year ~ has the Knack of Literature ~ & is
reliable
& honest ~" (22 June 86). Many young people add a few years in
order
to get a job; when I first went to work I lied and said I was 14, even
though I was younger. As late as 1889, a press notice brought to
Whitman's
attention claimed "that a young man of 12, who drives him out, likes
and
will lecture on him after he is dead, having taken notes of all he has
said." This press account distressed Whitman no end and the poet called
it a "lie in big, big type. (With Walt Whitman in Camden,
6:167).
The boy was probably not 12 in 1889, but neither was he 18 in 1886. My
estimate is that Bill was 12 when the two began going together in 1884
and was 18 when they parted in 1889. He was unquestionably a teenager
when
Whitman knew him.

The two became acquainted in 1884 when Whitman was 65 years
old.
In Walt Whitman's handwriting, there is a two-page description of their
life together, which purports to be written by Duckett, presumably
written
for Whitman's biographer and friend Richard Bucke. Duckett recalled: "I
became acquainted with Mr Whitman in 1884 when he bought and moved in
the
little house at 328 Mickle Street, within three doors of which I lived.
We boys had a quoit club, and W. made us a present of a handsome set of
quoits for pitching. (Thomas Eakins has a painting of boys pitching
quoits,
a game resembling horse-shoes.) Soon Bill had moved in and set up house
with Whitman. After they had broken up, Whitman said that his
housekeeper,
Mary Oakes Davis, had invited the boy in, but Bill claimed Whitman
himself
had taken the initiative. Whitman pretended to be outraged, "think of
it!
~ that I invited him here, that he was my guest! ~ the young scamp that
he is! Why, that is downright perjury, outrageous lying. (With Walt
Whitman in Camden, 4:64).

Whether Whitman protested too much or not, the tie between
them was
much more than a casual acquaintance, and neither man nor boy disputes
that Duckett lived with Whitman. For about five years Whitman keeps
close
track of the boy in his notebooks. They were nearly inseparable in
1885,
particularly after September 15, when Whitman's friends bought him a
horse
and buggy. The poet wrote in his notebook in November 1885, "go out in
wagon every afternoon ~ Wm Duckett drives." There is an 1885 picture of
Duckett and Whitman in the buggy, all hitched up ready to go.

Duckett evidently moved into Whitman's house May 1, 1886, and,
except
for some short absences, the two lived together until December 1888,
when
the housekeeper expelled Bill because he wasn't paying her for his
board.
The short times Bill was away from Camden were carefully noted by
Whitman
in his notebooks. That the relationship was more than casual might be
shown
by Whitman's wanting to cover up such a simple matter as Billy's
driving.
In the summer of 1887 both the artist Herbert Gilchrist and the
sculptor
Sidney Morse moved into the house. Not only was Bill shunted aside, but
Whitman wrote a sketch of himself for Morse's notebook, describing
himself:
"He wrote generally two or three hours a day, and often went out for a
drive in a phaeton that his friends had presented him with. He drove
himself."
(In Re Walt Whitman, 382). The last sentence cannot be true ~ at
least in 1887 ~ because Whitman was too weak for driving by himself.

In his own recollections, Bill wrote that Whitman "was
entirely free
from indelicacy or any unchastity ["in any form." is marked out here]
whatever."
Again, there seems to be a note of apology and cover up in even
mentioning
the question of chastity. Why would there be a need to even argue the
issue?
Edward Carpenter said that he had had sex with Walt Whitman and that
the
poet "thought that people should 'know' each other on the physical and
emotional planes as well as the mental." Carpenter in 1923 demonstrated
to the young Gavin Arthur just how Walt Whitman gave a blow job. "He
snuggled
up to me and kissed my ear. His beard tickled my neck. He smelled like
the leaves and ferns and soil of autumn woods... . I just lay there in
the moonlight that poured in at the window and gave myself up to the
loving
man's marvelous petting... . At last his hand was moving between my
legs
and his tongue was in my belly-button. And then when he was tickling my
fundament just behind the balls and I could not hold it any longer, his
mouth closed just over the head of my penis and I could feel my young
vitality
flowing into his old age. (Gay Sunshine Interviews, l:l26-28).
Carpenter
~ like Sidney Morse ~ had first met Whitman in 1876 and felt he was
carrying
on the older man's religion by communing in this way with the bodies of
young boys.

Whatever might have been the sexual relations between Duckett
and
Whitman ~ even if they never had sexual intercourse ~ they were
certainly
lovers. After their unharmonious separation, Whitman still recalled
that
"we were quite thick then: thick: when I had money it was as freely
Bill's
as my own. I paid him well for all he did for me." Not only did Bill go
everywhere with Whitman ~ perhaps of necessity because of the older
man's
weaknesses ~ but many of their expeditions were more dates or outings
than
anything else. Thus they went to Billy Thompson's in Gloucester, New
Jersey,
for what Whitman called "a rousing dinner of shad & champagne" (Correspondence,
4:27). Another time they went to Sea Isle City and "stayed there at the
hotel two or three days." In the summer of 1887, Whitman told the
sculptor
Sidney H. Morse, "I detest lemonade... . If one is going to drink
anything
~ champagne, abstemiously taken, goes to the spot and don't make a fool
of a fellow. A copious draught, also, not from habit, but, for
instance,
as the boys say". (In Re Walt Whitman, 388). Mary Oakes Davis
claimed
that after the poet died in 1892, the boys broke into the basement and
drank all the champagne. Might Bill have been among their number?

Their most public performance together was in New York City,
where,
April 14, 1887, Whitman delivered his lecture on Abraham Lincoln at the
well-filled Madison Square Theater. "He was accompanied," recalls
Elizabeth
Leavitt Keller in Walt Whitman in Mickle Street, "by William
Duckett,
a young friend who acted as valet and nurse, and it was on his arm the
old man leaned as he came forward on the stage and stood a few minutes
to acknowledge the applause of the audience." The house was packed and
the author received $250 from gate receipts; Andrew Carnegie threw in
an
extra $350 for his box seat. Whitman wrote a friend that afterwards he
"had a stunning reception ~ I think 300 people, many ladies ~ that
evn'g
Westminister Hotel ~ newspaper friendly, everybody friendly, even the
authors. Correspondence,
4:87). Bill not only shared hotel facilities with his mentor but he
served
as hostess at the reception. The New York Evening Sun reported:
"A young man who bore the double burden of receiving the cards of the
callers
and having the toothache had come over from Camden with Mr. Whitman as
his attendant. He is William Duckett. In an hour Mr. Duckett had a very
full hand of cards of distinguished men and the crowd became so great
that
he gave up trying to announce each newcomer" (Daybooks, 417-18).
For a Camden orphan this event at the elegant Westminister Hotel must
have
been astonishing in its elegance; the Evening Sun leader began:
"Poets, Artists, Men with Horse Sense, and Lovely Women in Line" and
went
on for 38 column-inches.

At a time when a first-class blast-furnace laborer in
Carnegie's
mills received only one dollar for a 12-hour day, the steelmaster's
contribution
of $350 represented an enormous amount of money. Possessions seem to
have
been at the heart of the falling out between Whitman and Duckett. In
April
1889, Whitman was looking for some printed photos of himself; there had
only been 250 to begin with; Whitman thought there had been 305. A
rival
suggested Bill might have taken them, and Whitman went off in a tirade:
"I must not say who ~ only that they are probably stolen. I have had
many
things purloined, stolen, from the rooms here ~ books, pamphlets,
papers,
clothing, pictures. I had fully six or seven pairs of gloves ~ choice
gloves
given to me ~ gloves of some value; attractive, too, evidently to
others.
I had also half a dozen handkerchiefs, presents, some of them silk;
choice,
fine, beautiful; they are gone, too. Some of these things were
souvenirs,
some not." But he had to admit, "I am a great forgetter, mislayer: I
hesitate
to explain the missing things this way till all other explanations are
exhausted" (With Walt Whitman in Camden, 5:82). Bill was living
with Walt Whitman until forced to leave. When he gathered his
belongings,
they would have necessarily fallen together with his mentor's in their
times together. Whose handkerchief was whose? Whitman himself had said
that they shared everything.

Even if Bill had confused his own and his lover's belongings,
this
was presumably not a new development in 1888-89. Why did the falling
out
come then? Among lovers there seems to be a cooling off of physical
ardor
after three or four years; whether it's fatigue, boredom, restlessness
or whatever, a crisis inevitably arises after a few years together.
People
are always changing ~ something of a shock both to the self and to
others.
Sometimes these changes weld the couple further together; other times,
pull them apart. If one of the lovers is a teenager, the difficulties
are
compounded because of the rapidity of growth and change in these years.
Likewise with an elder partner ~ particularly in their 60s and 70s ~
physical
changes can be rapid. When Whitman ended his stay with Peter Doyle in
Washington,
he had a stroke. So now as his ardor cooled with Duckett, his body
collapsed.
In June 1888 the poet suffered a stroke, which essentially left him
bed-ridden
the rest of his life.

Whitman's hopes for Duckett do not seem to have been
realized. He
wanted the young man not only as a companion but also as a Boswell.
Duckett's
letters and notes to Bucke, which attempted to record details of life
with
the poet, were carefully cultivated and supervised by Whitman. Some
have
suggested that Duckett was only interested in wheedling money out of
Dr.
Bucke, but I think a more likely explanation was that Duckett failed to
become the amanuensis Whitman was looking for. Between man and boy
lovers,
tension sometimes develops if the more experienced man tries too hard
to
shape the boy into an inappropriate mold. Whether Duckett tried and
failed
to please Whitman or whether Duckett simply resented the pressure being
laid upon him is unclear now.

But the reason Whitman gave up the relationship as readily ~
if he
did not in fact precipitate the break ~ was amply because he found a
young
man more suitable to his needs. He had first tried to get the sculptor
Sidney Morse to keep a journal of the home life of the poet, had given
him a blank book and dedicated it in May 1887. Whitman even wrote a
sample
for Morse as he had for Duckett, but the artist was no more cut out for
such work than the quoit player. The great amanuensis was found a year
later in Horace Traubel. Unlike Duckett, Traubel was not working class;
he was a newspaper man, highly literate. Born in Camden in 1858, when
he
meshed with Whitman in 1888, he was nearly twice as old as Duckett.
Whether
Traubel ever had sex with Whitman or whether they were lovers is less
important
than the way in which Traubel immediately supplanted Bill. On March 28,
1888, Traubel began his daily journal With Walt Whitman in Camden,
a journal he kept until the poet's death in 1892. The book has been
published
in six volumes to date and has only reached July 1890. (Volume 1
appeared
in 1906; volume 6, in 1982.) Traubel hardly disguises his loathing for
Bill Duckett. And in getting rid of Bill, the housekeeper was a ready
ally.
Some have suggested that Mary Oakes Davis, Whitman's housekeeper, was
in
love with the sage, "gladly sacrificing her life for one whom she
doggedly
though secretly loved." She also seems to have specialized in older,
dying
men. Before coming to keep house for Whitman, she had got half the
estate
of a sea captain whom she cared for; she married another seaman, who
died
at sea. And after Whitman died, she sued his estate, claiming that the
thousand dollars left her was insufficient for all the expenses she had
been out in caring for the famous bard. She succeeded in her suit and
essentially
got all the money left the estate in 1894.

In 1889, the litigious Mary Oakes Davis took William Duckett
into
court, claiming he owed her for board. First she retained a Camden
lawyer,
who discouraged her; Traubel claimed the lawyer was associated with
Duckett.
Then she retained a Philadelphia lawyer, who charged her a hefty $40
fee.
Bill had some funds held by the Philadelphia Fidelity Trust from his
dead
father. Since he was a minor, the lawyer brought a claim against the
estate
~ a case which could be handled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where
the
money was being held ~ rather than in Camden, New Jersey, where the
alleged
debt had been incurred. On February 1, 1889, Bill Duckett took the
stand
and said he had been invited by Walt Whitman and had always been a
guest.
Accepting Mary Davis's word against the boy's, the judge rendered a
decision
against the Duckett estate, granting Davis $190.

Whitman's role in this eviction is somewhat curious. He was
now quite
bed-ridden and dependent on Mary Davis. In fact, she even threatened to
quit after Whitman had his stroke. "Mary has lived with me now for some
years:" the poet told Traubel, "three or four years: we have never even
had any misunderstanding: no words: yet the nearest we ever came to
quarrel
was just about Bill: this young rascal who's now trying to evade his
obligations"
(With Walt Whitman in Camden, 4:64). While calling the boy a
liar,
Whitman indicated that he still had a soft spot for the lad: "poor boy!
poor boy! I pity him: I would receive him today if he needed me: would
help him: I am sure I would be the first to help him. I liked Bill: he
had good points: is bright ~ very bright." Whitman claimed that he
himself
had asked the boy to leave many times: "told him he must not stay. Bill
would swear by all that was holy that he would by and by make all that
right: would almost literally get down on his knees then I would
weaken."

Both Traubel and Davis kept Duckett from seeing Whitman. When
the
boy came to call on Mickle Street, he was not allowed to get to the
poet's
bedroom on the second floor. But in June of 1889, when Whitman was out
by the front stoop, Bill was able to melt the older man's heart again
with
a story of his recently deceased sister. Whitman gave him $10 from some
recently collected birthday money. However, when Bill wrote in December
requesting a loan of $10 or $15, his letter seems not to have been
answered.
That letter of December 20, 1889 ~ just at Christmas time ~ is the last
surviving connection between the two men.

For Whitman, Billy was first and foremost his wild-driving
horse
man; Whitman tried to get him a job on the railroad ~ twice he got jobs
with the railroad, but both times lasted only a short time. Recording
the
Duckett details, Traubel was mistaken when he thought Whitman had "got
on a new track." "Do you know much about the transportation men? ~ the
railroad men, the boatmen?" Whitman mused. "It seems to me that of all
modern men the transportation men most nearly parallel the ancients in
ease, poise, simplicity, average nature, robust instinct, first
handedness:
are the next the very a b c of real life... . I am au fait
always
with wharfmen, deckhands, trainworkers." Bill doesn't seem to have been
cut out for the transport any more than for the writing business ~
perhaps
like Whitman, he enjoyed watching more than being a deckhand ~ perhaps
he was more suited to be a counter jumper (i.e., a sales clerk)
at a notion store on Market Street in Philadelphia, where he worked for
a while.

Whitman's word on Duckett is confused and inconsistent.
Duckett's
on the older man may be equally disingenuous, but it's a happy note to
conclude on. Bill said of Walt: "He always gave me good advice and
help,
and was the best friend I ever had."